Nigeria's manufacturing sector once powered the economy. Today it barely registers.
Back in the early 1980s, factories hummed across Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and Aba. Textile mills hired thousands of workers.
Vehicle assembly plants produced Peugeot, Volkswagen and Leyland models for local markets.
Manufacturing then accounted for more than one-fifth of GDP. Four decades later, it contributes just 8 percent.
Policymakers were convinced industrialisation would transform the nation. They weren't wrong about the goal.
But somewhere along the way, the strategy collapsed.
Nigeria tried three major industrial policies over those decades. Each one rested on a different economic philosophy.
Yet all three produced nearly identical results: factory closures and shrinking output.
The numbers tell the story starkly. Manufacturing's GDP share fell from 20 percent in the early 1980s to 14 percent by 2000.
By 2005 it had slipped to 10 percent. It dropped further to 6.8 percent in 2010.
Today's 8.05 percent figure represents only marginal recovery. Decades of policy have barely reversed the slide.
Experts say the puzzle isn't a shortage of ideas. It's why so many strategies produced so little change.
Oil money lies at the heart of the problem. After the 1973 crude boom, rising revenues strengthened the naira.
Imports became cheaper. Local manufacturers couldn't compete.
Capital and government attention shifted toward oil, construction and services. Manufacturing and agriculture faded into the background.
Economists call this "Dutch Disease." Oil wealth removes the pressure to build competitive industries. Nigeria's factories became dependent on imported machinery and foreign exchange—even when official policy supposedly protected them.
That contradiction haunted every reform attempt afterward.
The first major strategy came in the 1960s. Nigeria adopted Import Substitution Industrialisation, or ISI, and stuck with it through the mid-1980s.
The idea was simple: build domestic capacity behind tariff walls. License restrictions would keep out foreign competitors.
Government support would nurture local producers.
For a time it appeared to work. Manufacturing averaged roughly 20 percent of GDP throughout much of the 1980s.
It peaked at about 21 percent in 1984 and 1985.
But beneath the surface, trouble was brewing. Many factories functioned as assembly operations only.
They imported machinery, components and intermediate inputs from abroad.
Vehicle plants sourced major portions of their parts overseas. Textile firms depended heavily on imported equipment and chemicals.
Protection existed on paper. Productivity did not.
The factories stood. Their contribution to real economic development was questionable.
